[PART IV.]
IMPRESSIONS OF "NO MAN'S LAND."
[CHAPTER I.]
AS IN A PICTURE OF EPINAL.
Yesterday I met the Prince of Wales in the lines. The Prince of Wales! What does that name not say to a Frenchman!
It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. A small, soaking rain was falling over the dismal plateau where once stood so many smiling villages and fair woods, now ruined, whose names, immortalised by British valour, must live forever in history.
It was close on nightfall. Through the sticky, heavy mud troops and wagons crawled towards the firing line. The men, with naked chests that defied the bitter cold, sweated furiously under the load of their equipment. Horses with huge, hairy feet, mounted by Australians like so many cowboys, struggled, foaming, to drag the huge lorries through the deep ruts of the roadway.